The Common Core State Standards Initiative is well on its way to becoming a reality in our public schools.

This National Core Curriculum is based on a one-size-fits-all education and will make our local schools accountable to Washington, D.C., not to parents. Parents have a right to decide what their children need to learn as well as when they need to learn it. It is our hard-earned tax dollars paying for our child’s education.

The federal funds attached to accepting Common Core are a bribe so the federal government can take control of our children. Right now, these Common Core Standards are for English and math only, but you can be assured the wheels are turning for it to include social studies and science in the near future. Can you imagine the goals the liberal progressives and out-of-state bureaucrats will develop?

The assessment tool being used to test our children for these federal funds are not objective questions with right and wrong answers that are easily scored with easy to compare results. By South Carolina accepting and signing on to this Common Core Curriculum, the federal government has achieved its goal of forcing teachers to indoctrinate and promote subjective beliefs, multiculturalism, political correctness, diversity, global warming, homosexuality and social justice all under the guise of trying to “help” us fix South Carolina education problems.

Local educators and parents are better at deciding what the needs of our children are, not the federal government.

Margie Langston, Seneca

Senate immigration reform plan full of holes

Like so many of the Swiss cheese proposals in Washington, the so-called Gang of 8 has come up with another immigration reform idea that is full of holes.

The proposed “Path to Citizenship” (amnesty) legislation allows about 11 million illegals register with the government and then work and live in the United States as probationers while the borders are secured, visa overstays are “combatted” and employment verification is in place. This is estimated to take 10 to 15 years.

If we can’t track current visa overstays, how will we track the 11 million probationers? The criteria for declaring the borders secure must be the decision of border state governors and attorney generals, border-county sheriffs and Border Patrol officers only.

Why should we increase the visas for the “best and brightest” when our current education system is considered excellent?

Since the U.S. taxpayers have paid for an employment verification system, eVerify, what justifiable reason can be given for not using it for all employees?

Finally, if the reason for hiring illegal lower-skilled workers is to fill jobs that “Americans will not do,” isn’t it now time for those American workers to re-evaluate their employment status so the rest of us don’t have to spend tax money to feed them. The proposal of a new “W” visa for these guest workers is not necessary. The existing H-1A visa covers these workers.